Summary

Combo decks in Standard don’t show up often, and when they do, they tend to capture the hearts of many Standard players. One such deck in the previous Standard format was Temur Pummeler, which aimed to deal 20+ damage to its opponent in one fell swoop, mirroring the strategy that has made Modern Infect a successful archetype. With rotation, this deck looks to still be viable, but in a slightly different form.

Like the Temur variant, this deck looks to gain energy from a couple of reliable sources. Firstly, Electrostatic Pummeler itself has a built in three energy, which equals one activation. The 3 mana artifact creature is the kill condition of this deck, and gets out of hand quickly once energy is amassed. Servant of the Conduit is a fantastic, cheap source of energy that helps this deck gain a mana advantage over the opponent, mirroring Noble Hierarch‘s role in Modern Infect. Rogue Refiner is a solid attacker that helps the deck get through cards in its deck while adding energy.

Attune with Aether is arguably at its best in this deck, as it’s needed to hit land drops and gets energy on the board early. As for ways of pumping Pummeler (and other less exciting creatures), this deck plays the full playset of Blossoming Defense, which protects the creature it targets, and One With the Wind, which gives the creature a permanent pump with evasion built in. The Ixalan common can turn any creature into a formidable threat for the opponent, and gives this deck a different effective angle of attack. This deck also gladly plays the full 4 copies of Larger Than Life, which frequently threatens lethal when paired with Pummeler.

As for other ways of winning, this deck has an extremely solid Plan B, which involves energy combined with payoffs such as Longtusk Cub and Bristling Hydra. Longtusk Cub has proven that as far as two drops go, it’s the most threatening if left unanswered. Bristling Hydra provides slower decks with massive problems, as it’s a very beefy attacker that is incredibly hard to kill, both when engaging with it in combat, and when trying to manually remove it from the board.